Sam Baker on Gatsby

Sam Baker on Careless People, Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby

It pains me to say it, but I have Gatsby fatigue. Two days before the Baz Luhrmann extravaganza is even released in the UK, and I am over it. It makes no sense. I love F Scott Fitzgerald's classic (often described as the perfect novel) and have lost count of the number of times I have read it. Although, if I had to choose one, I'd opt for Tender Is The Night, but that's a whole other conversation.

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And I have loved Baz Luhrmann. For me, his Romeo & Juliet, and its infectious soundtrack, was one of the defining movies of the 90s. But that could be because I was editing Just 17 at the time and it was the film that made Leo the Beiber of his generation.

Anyway, I'm not tempted. I'm sure it will be fabulous, an assault on the senses, the art direction out of this world, the cast stellar. But it won't be my Gatsby. My Jay won't walk across his spacious West Egg gardens and stare out at the green light in the dock the bottom of my Daisy's garden. It won't be narrated by my Nick.

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Let's be honest, Luhrmann didn't stand a fighting chance.

Someone else who I suspect will have some bones to pick with Luhrmann's Gatsby - on far less specious grounds than mine - is American academic Sarah Churchwell. Her book, Careless People, Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby is a study of the New York of the autumn of 1922, into which Gatsby was born. Part memoir, part painstaking historical research, part personal journey, Careless People brings to vivid life prohibition era New York and will make you rethink almost everything you thought you knew about F Scott Fitzgerald and his most famous work. (There are so many examples I'd like to cite but they'd almost feel like spoilers, so evocative is this book.)

Another book that I didn't like half so much, but still worthy of mention is Z, a novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by American novelist Therese Anne Fowler. Z is written in the style of, but is not as engaging as, The Paris Wife, Paula McLain's fictionalisation of the life of Hadley Richardson, Ernest Hemingway's first 'Paris' wife. Z sets out to tell the story of Zelda's troubled search for her own identity. There are few revelations here but it is still a compelling read.

That said, if you are truly interested in Zelda, you could do worse than seek out a copy of Nancy Milford's Zelda, arguably the definitive biography.

Careless People is published by Virago on 6 June, £16.99; Z is out now (£14.99); Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby is on general release this weekend.

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